50 Best Kubernetes Architecture Tutorials

Kubernetes is a multi-functional, container-centric platform for managing workloads and services. Given the fact that containers and container orchestration can dramatically improve costs, flexibility, and resilience, it’s no mystery why Kubernetes has soared in popularity since Google open-sourced it in 2014.

On one hand, it’s a powerful orchestration tool; on the other, it’s not a silver bullet that will solve all your problems. In fact, at the same time that it helps to manage dynamic infrastructure, it also introduces new vulnerabilities that pose a threat to security. To understand the value of Kubernetes, how to integrate it in a way that improves operational efficiency, and how to guard against the new vulnerabilities that container orchestration introduces, it’s critical that you have more than a passing knowledge.

So if you’re ready to start diving into Kubernetes, you’ve come to the right place. Below, we’ve curated a list of 50 top quality tutorials to help you fully understand Kubernetes architecture and best practices.

Note: The training resources listed in this post are not ranked in terms of perceived value or quality of content. The intent is simply to provide you with resources that we feel could be helpful in helping you develop or add to your knowledge of Kubernetes.

This is a self-paced course that you can complete in as little as five weeks if you work on it for two to three hours every week

If your team is beginning to use Kubernetes for container orchestration and you need guidelines on how to start transforming your organization with Kubernetes and cloud native patterns, if you’d like to simplify software container orchestration and find a way to expand your use of Kubernetes without adding infrastructure complexity, this course is for you.

What you will learn:

The origin, architecture, primary components, and building blocks of Kubernetes

How to set up and access a Kubernetes cluster using Minikube

Ways to run applications on the deployed Kubernetes environment and access the deployed applications

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has published this recorded presentation to tackle the tricky process of configuring Kubernetes on multiple cloud environments. Brian Redbeard, of CoreOS, discusses and shows a great overview of the process.

CodeShip gives one of the most detailed tutorials that covers quite a bit of ground for a 10-minute read. Images and simple language make this great for those who know what Kubernetes is, but those who are fuzzy on the topic may want to start with a tutorial that explains more “what” than “how” first.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

Define the number of nodes to deploy and which platform to install K8s on

If you’re looking for a Kubernetes tutorial, how about a Google engineer actively working “on improving the Kubernetes Engine developer experience”? This is exactly what Dan Sanche writes about on the Google Cloud Platform blog on Medium.

With over half a million views, this introduction from Digital Ocean is one of the most popular resources for learning the basics of Kubernetes. It’s kept up-to-date and contains long, detailed definitions.

As one of the few paid options on our list, this provides a full set of curriculum and videos detailing every step and providing all the necessary instructions to guide students. By the end, you’ll have learned all Kubernetes basics first hand.

Duckademy is known for really helpful IT tutorials, some of which (including this one) are free. While this video is only one in a full course, it’s still very helpful and offers a more academic style of training.

This is another tutorial from Edureka with a fun approach and a particular spin. This resource has tons of graphic elements and illustrations to help learners get a real grasp on the subject matter. There is also a series of videos to help you move through the content.

In the tutorial, you will learn how to package and deploy your very own web application by using GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). It focuses on packaging the application in a Docker container image and running that image on the GKE cluster, creating a server pool that users can utilize according to their scaling requirement.

With this simple tutorial, learn to launch a Node.js web application, create replicas for the same container by creating a cluster, and use Docker to build your Node.js container and register it safely using Google Container Registry.

This tutorial explains how to develop a Node.js API that can run on multiple operating systems using Google Kubernetes Engine and its tool, Minikube. The tutorial uses a MacOs; however, following the tutorial is easy even on Linux and Windows with slightly different codes.

In this tutorial you will learn how to quickly create an Amazon EKS cluster using AWS CloudFormation. Before you begin, here is a list of some accounts and utilities that are required: AWS Account, EC2 Key Pair, cim.sh, AWS CLI, and kubectl and AWS IAM authenticator for Kubernetes.

This tutorial uses the example of a public relations firm to show how the firm deploys a containerized application using IBM Cloud and Kubernetes. The tutorial also goes through the process of managing Docker images in the IBM Cloud.

At the end of the step-by-step tutorial (it takes about 40 minutes to complete), you’ll have learned how to:

In this tutorial the learner will learn the basics of Google Kubernetes Engine, along with the best Kubernetes architecture tutorial that consists of 5 layers: Master Server, Nodes, Container Runtime, Network, and a Kubernetes API.

This tutorial explains how to deploy a Node.js web application in a Kubernetes cluster using the Minikube tool and also how to allow the cluster to adapt to the load from external sources by automatically scaling in size.

In this tutorial you’ll learn about Kubernetes Objects and their representation and how every object has two predefined fields: Object Spec and Object Status. It also guides beginners in describing and expressing them in .yaml format.

At the end of this tutorial, you will have learned all about the three main Kubernetes components (Master Components, Node Components, and Add-ons) and how these components are essential in delivering a working Kubernetes cluster.

By the end of the tutorial, you will have learned that:

Master Components are responsible for the control plane of the cluster

Here’s a fantastic, interactive tutorial from Kubernetes.io. It is primarily aimed at beginners and should only take about 10 minutes to complete. It’s an online terminal and “a pre-configured Linux environment.”

Rather than being a fully developed tutorial on Kubernetes, this is more of a definition of terms and a look at the anatomy of Kubernetes. It’s pretty thorough and should give a developer with little knowledge a good conceptual understanding of Kubernetes.

This is a step-by-step tutorial (with images) explaining the process of installing a single master Kubernetes cluster. If you’re interested in using Kublr, the tutorial obviously mentions and suggests using their product, but it’s a solid explanation.

This is actually the second part of an overall tutorial on Kubernetes. Specifically, the article details installing and deploying multi-node clusters. The entire series is great, but this one is for those familiar with Kubernetes and looking to become better at scaling development.

Spinnaker is an open-source deployment tool developed by Netflix and can be used with Kubernetes in many different ways. It’s a newer tool, and using it can be tricky the first go around. This how-to is meant to help.

Yet Another Markup Language (YAML) is a data serialization standard for all programming languages (source). It’s a great little tool to save some dev time. This tutorial aims to help developers shave time and get more done during sprints by using YAML.

Many of the tutorials on our list are full of short definitions and quick get-started guides. This article has long-form answers with deep explanations about terms and procedures. The writing is a bit dry, but not unreadable.

All the tutorials in this list are helpful in different ways. Most were created by companies that make tools to help developers and have at least one product mention in them. This resource was created by a developer to help other developers.